Project News

Around 70 participants and 50 observers from 13 countries (12 Asian countries and one from Africa) joined the 1st Workshop of Online Workshop Series on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Nurses. It was a 2-day workshop; the topic of the 1st day was "Overview of CPD System for Nurses" and the 2nd day was "Training for Newly Graduated Nurses".

On the 1st day, nine countries presented the overview of CPD system of their countries and the other four joined the Q&A and discussion session. Although the situation of each country is different from one another, all countries share the common goal of improving the quality of nursing workforce in their countries.

In most of the countries that presented in this workshop, CPD is linked with the nursing license renewal which makes CPD mandatory for nurses. Nurses have to gain certain numbers of credits to renew their licenses. Some countries do not have a linkage between the license renewal and CPD. However, there are other measures taken to encourage nurses to be engaged in CPD.

On the 2nd day, three countries, Japan, Viet Nam and Thailand, presented their measures related to the training for newly graduated nurses. Japan shared about the guideline of training for newly graduated nurses formulated in 2010 by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. This guideline enables all healthcare facilities to provide training for newly graduated nurses regardless of types or scales of facilities. For example, it provides ideas on how small-scale facilities can jointly conduct trainings with multiple facilities or utilize trainings conducted by other organizations.

Viet Nam shared about the achievements and impacts of JICA project "the Project for Strengthening Clinical Training System for New-graduate Nurses" implemented in 2016-2020. Data of competency scores of 280 newly graduated nurses were collected at the times of before and after the 9-month clinical training. They were divided into the intervention group which received standard clinical training and the control group which received non-standard clinical training. Findings implied that the standard clinical training program could contribute to both increasing and standardizing new graduate nurses' competencies in Vietnam.^[1]

Thailand shared about the post baccalaureate nurse residency training. In Thailand, specialized nurses are needed due to the demand for increased specialization in patient care. Viewing the training of newly graduated nurses not only as a transition from being a student nurse to a registered nurse but also as a development process to become a specialized nurse, the country has initiated the post baccalaureate nurse residency training program from 2016. King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital was the first hospital to implement the program from 2018. The data which they have been collecting up to now has shown some positive results such as the effectiveness in increasing the competency and confidence level of newly graduated nurses and the high recognition from the multidisciplinary team of the hospital.

There is no single solution to address the challenges of CPD system in every country. Each country needs to take into account of its context; not just the situation of nursing workforce but also its health system, demographic dynamics, etc. However, to address challenges, we could learn from each other's good practice, lessons-learnt and challenges. It was clear that all the participants of the workshop were well aware of this. Active interaction among the participants were seen on the screen and in the chat box of the zoom meeting.

As mentioned in the beginning, this is a workshop series. We will move on to a different topic of the CPD system for nurses at the next workshop in May 2022. We are looking forward to having a fruitful discussion again!

This workshop was hosted by:

• Asia Pacific Action Alliance on Human Resources for Health (AAAH),
• Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA),
• Ministry of Public Health, Thailand,
• National Health Security Office (NHSO), Thailand,
• Thailand Nursing and Midwifery Council (TNMC), and
• GLO+UHC Phase 2